ABSTRACT
One night in about 200 CE a Greek philosopher stood up to deliver a speech. Here is how it began:
Oi~ me.n tou.j evgkwmiastikou.j lo,gouj toi/j plousi,oij dwroforou/ntej . . .
Thosewhomake gifts of encomiastic orations to the richwould rightly seem to me to be judged not only as flatterers and slaves . . . but also as impious and treacherous [ouv mo,non ko,lakej kai. avneleu,qeroi . . . avlla. kai. avsebei/j kai. evpi,bouloi]. They are impious [avsebei/j], then, because . . . they confer [God’s] due honor [ge,raj] [of praise] to men who are a filthy are
as – own is sufficient to make the soul flaccid [caunw/sai ta.j yuca.j], to corrupt and frustrate it – these [encomiasts] induce a further shock [prosekplh,ssousi] to the organs of judgment of the rich by arousing [evpai,rontej] them with the pleasures of excessive praises and above all by causing them to be contemptuous of everything else by which they are admired, save wealth alone. In truth, they are, as the saying goes, ‘‘piping fire to a fire’’ [pu/r evpi. pu/r metoceteu,ontej], when they pour vanity on vanity and place an additional burden on wealth – weighed down already by its very nature [fu,sei] – of the even heavier weight of conceit. . . . Instead, they ought to perform amputation [avfairei/n] and surgical excision [periko,ptein] as with a dangerous and deadly disease.
